


There Was An Attempt

by krikkit_war_robot



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krikkit_war_robot/pseuds/krikkit_war_robot
Summary: Arthur and Ford attend a fancy-dress party in Islington. Things do not go according to plan. Not that there was a plan in the first place.





	1. Introduction

Throughout the history of the galaxy, all sorts of means of intra-planetary travel have existed. Some forms of transportation, such as the Hyper-Quantum Maglev Hovercar (its name derived from the planet Maglev, on which it was invented, not to be confused with the rather old and outdated technology of magnetic levitation), which had a 4,000 Arcturan Megahorse-power engine and could cross an entire continent in just under an hour, proved to be extremely useful and reliable at the time and enjoyed great popularity before eventually being superceded by newer, more sophisticated forms of transportation.

Some other vehicles, such as the Sub-Compact Intelli-Car developed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, proved to be absolute disasters which were only interested in taking themselves for joyrides with no regard for the intended destination or even safety of their passengers.

Still other means of transportation are so amazingly primitive that they are nothing more than ancient history now in all but the most backward and technologically-deprived of planets.

One such example is the train. For technical details and a detailed history of trains, consult the relevant entry of the Encyclopedia Galactica. For a more interesting read on the subject, see the _Vehicles_ chapter of _Ancient Technology Whose Inventors Must Have Been Either Completely Mad Or Extremely Drunk To Have Even Thought Of In The First Place_ , written by a group of former professors from Maximegalon University. Alternatively, you can see a train for yourself if you visit one of those backward planets on which they still exist.

The fact that some planets (the Earth, for instance) still use trains to get from one place to another is particularly relevant here, as _on a train_ is precisely where this story begins.


	2. Chapter 1

Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect were on a train.

They were on a train because, given the limits of Earth technology, it was the most practical way for them to reach London.

And they were on their way to London because Ford had said earlier that he was bored with Arthur and with the West Country in general and that he was going somewhere “more interesting” for the day to “find something fun to do”. Arthur had had nothing better to do that day, so he had decided to go with him.

“Remind me again why we’re going all the way to London?” Arthur said whilst they were on the train.

Ford shrugged.

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s hardly round the corner, is it?” replied Arthur.

“No, but what’s there to do back home?” asked Ford. (His “home” at present being the small flat he had begrudgingly settled in for the time being due to his stay on Earth turning out to be much longer than intended. He really only called it his “home” for the sake of maintaining his cover; he spent very little time there and intended to leave for good as soon as he either found a way off the planet or at least somewhere better to stay on Earth.)

“Head down the pub?” he continued. “That’s the most exciting place for miles, and even there you rarely see anything interesting happen.”

Ford had a point. Arthur did not lead an exciting life, and he lived in a place which fit nicely with his routine and predictable lifestyle. Ford had never followed this sort of lifestyle. Arthur had never entirely understood why he had come to live in such an uninteresting place, but had come to the conclusion that Guildford (to which Arthur had never been and of which Ford rarely spoke) must be an equally uninteresting place, if not more so.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” said Arthur, “but it does sound better than spending the day in London for no reason in particular. I’m starting to wonder why I agreed to come in the first place.”

Arthur looked at his watch. They still had well over an hour and a half to go before reaching London, which gave him plenty of time to question why he had agreed to go to London and why he so frequently let this friend of his disrupt the comfortable routine of his life.

“You agreed to come because you’re slightly less boring than I thought you were,” said Ford.

“I think I prefer being boring,” commented Arthur, who had already come to regret this trip after all of twelve minutes on the train. He looked impatiently out the window and watched the passing scenery go by.

“Suit yourself,” said Ford, “but if you wanted to stay home, you should have decided so before you got on the train.”

  
The first couple of hours which Ford and Arthur spent in London were mildly eventful but not particularly remarkable, and consisted mainly of sightseeing, stopping for drinks, and Arthur remarking no less frequently than three times per hour how busy and crowded London was, despite the fact that this was incredibly obvious and saying it served no purpose except fulfilling that strange habit humans have of regularly stating the obvious for no apparent reason.

It was during early evening that the day became particularly interesting. They had just arrived at a party in Islington which Ford had dragged Arthur to. Not literally dragged, of course, but as far as Arthur was concerned it really wouldn’t have been any different if he had. He would have much rather spent the evening in the quiet of his home, drinking tea whilst solving the crossword, than at a crowded party surrounded by people he’d never met. Especially when it was painfully obvious he wasn’t supposed to be there.

“If I’d known this was going to be a fancy-dress party,” he said to Ford almost as soon as they arrived, “I would have brought a costume. Or better yet, I wouldn’t have come in the first place.”

There were some days where Arthur found Ford to be incredibly irritating. Today was becoming more and more one of those days.

“You would’ve known if you’d actually looked at the invite,” said Ford, who had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to gatecrash the party and had not given Arthur much say in the matter.

“The invite? What invite? No one invited us!”

Ford had already disappeared into the crowd. He found Arthur again about forty minutes later standing rather pitifully in the corner near the entry door and looking occasionally in the direction of some girl. She was a beautiful young woman who looked to be in her late twenties or so, with flowing black hair, deep brown eyes, and a rather silly costume which (in Ford’s opinion) was utterly ridiculous and completely robbed her of any attractiveness.

She was dressed as an alien. More precisely, she was dressed as what only someone who had clearly never met an alien might think one would look like. She was wearing a short, tight-fitting green dress made of some sort of shiny material, and she had high-heeled boots and elbow-length gloves to match. On her head was a headband with a pair of springy green antennae which bounced wildly with every movement of her head. To top it all off and complete the ‘space’ look, she had a crescent moon painted in gold on one cheek and a pair of gold stars on the other.

Her costume could be more accurately described as the product of humanity’s endless ignorance of life beyond Earth rolled up and squeezed out into one sexy costume.

Arthur Dent, an equally ignorant human, thought she looked quite nice. He became so distracted by her that he did not notice Ford approach him.

“What are you standing around like that for? Go talk to her, don’t you!”

Arthur suddenly came to awareness and realized someone was speaking to him. Looking away from the girl, he replied:

“What? Me, talk to her? You must be out of your mind!”

Ford said nothing. He gave Arthur a deadpan you-can’t-seriously-be-like-this sort of look.

“I mean, look at her,” Arthur continued. “She’s, she’s, I don’t know! I don’t have a chance with her!”

There was a momentary awkward silence between them as Arthur didn’t know what to say or do.

“You were staring at her for five minutes straight,” Ford finally said.

“Yes, well, she’s-”

“Go talk to her,” he said again. “Have a drink or two, it’ll make it easier.”

Arthur found thought of actually speaking to her greatly intimidating, so he made one last attempt to avoid this:

“I don’t think she’ll be interested. Really, she won’t be. She looks more your type, anyway.”

Ford took another look at the girl in the dreadful alien costume. She looked more appalling than the teasers who had dropped him off on this Zarkforsaken planet nearly fifteen years ago.

“Definitely not my type,” he said. “Anyway, your loss.” And with that, he vanished back into the crowd, muttering to himself something about how he would never understand humans.


	3. Chapter 2

Arthur did manage to work up the courage to talk to the girl eventually. It did not start out well: he had initially tried to break the ice by offering to fetch her a drink, which she declined due to the fact that she already had a drink which she was clearly holding at the time. Then, he had complimented her on her costume, and when she had asked him why he wasn’t dressed up, he tried to pass it off that he was dressed as a character from some sitcom she had never heard of (because he was in fact only making this up on the spot, and he could tell she wasn’t buying it). Finally, when she had asked how he knew the host of the party, he realized he couldn’t come up with a believable excuse and admitted that he had not been invited and did not particularly want to attend, that he was only there because a friend had dragged him along, but that he thought that she was very pretty and nice and would like to chat with her for a while.

Somehow, his awkward, blunt honesty had unexpectedly worked. For some reason or another, she had agreed to chat with him, despite being very obviously out of his league. And so they got to know each other over little sandwiches and cheap wine (this was not the sort of party to serve fancy expensive drinks). The din of the party and the sea of guests faded into the background as Arthur Dent became entirely focused on his conversation with this woman:

Tricia McMillan.

She was stunning. Arthur was stunned not only by her attractiveness and her friendly warmth; he was stunned also by how easy she was to talk to and the fact that she was even bothering to talk with him at all after the awkward start he had gotten off to with her.

Most of all, though, he was stunned by her intelligence. She had a degree in maths and another in astrophysics, and she had a lot to say on these matters. Arthur didn’t understand very much of it.

Their conversation fell into a steady pattern after a while: she would share some piece of trivia which sounded terribly technical and scientific, and he would nod and agree and pretend he had some understanding of what she had said. Occasionally he would share some interesting knowledge of his own, like how the milk should be put in before the water when making tea so that it wouldn’t get scalded.

“Did you know,” she was explaining at one point, “that you can survive in the vacuum of space for up to thirty seconds if you take in a lungful of air first?”

Arthur nodded.

“Interesting,” he said, though he saw no use for this information.

“Those thirty seconds could mean the difference between life and death,” she continued. “If you’re lucky, that’s enough time to get rescued by a passing spaceship.”

“A passing spaceship?” Arthur echoed disbelievingly. “Where would you find a passing spaceship?”

“It would come from Earth, if you’re particularly lucky,” she answered, “though of course manned missions from Earth aren’t at all common yet and probably won’t be at any point in the foreseeable future.”

“Then where else might it come from?” he asked.

“Somewhere else in the galaxy, most likely,” answered Tricia. “Given the size of the Universe, it’s highly probable there’s a civilization somewhere out there that has already achieved interstellar travel. We just haven’t made contact with them yet.”

“Are you trying to tell me space aliens exist?” asked Arthur, who found the idea rather absurd.

“Not exactly,” she explained. “I’m not saying it’s a fact that aliens exist, just that it’s mathematically provable that there is a high probability of it. I can explain the calculations if you’d like.”

“No, that’s alright,” he said. “I believe you.” In truth, Arthur did not believe Tricia’s claim. He simply did not want to hear her go into another complicated explanation of something he didn’t understand with a lot of big numbers in it.

Tricia liked using big numbers and worked them into the conversation anyway.

“Good,” she said. “Anyway, back to the subject of being rescued from certain death in the vacuum of space: when you take into account the likelihood of life existing beyond our planet, the probability that at least one alien society has sufficiently advanced technology...”

She carried on talking quite animatedly. The antennae on her headband bounced about with a great deal of energy as she enthused about something to do with space aliens and probability and large numbers. Arthur really didn’t understand any of what she was saying to him, just that it all sounded terribly complicated and she was getting very excited about it.

“...so, assuming that you are unable to board the ship you exited for one reason or another, the probability of being rescued by another ship in those thirty seconds is two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.”

“That’s fascinating,” said Arthur, who did not understand a word of it.

“I’d love to go to space someday...” she added wistfully. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid the odds that I’ll ever get that opportunity are... well, funny enough, exactly that.”

“Exactly what?”

“Two hundred and seventy-”

A man interrupted her from behind:

“Hey doll, is this guy boring you?”

Tricia turned round to look at him. He was dressed in a rather elaborate pirate costume, complete with a caged parrot on his shoulder. Arthur had a strange uneasy feeling about him.

“No, not at all,” said Tricia. “We were just talking about-”

“Outer space?” he interrupted again. “I heard. Now, what if I said I’ve got a spaceship of my own?”

Tricia, caught up in her passion for outer space combined with moderate intoxication, was not as immediately skeptical as she perhaps should have been.

“No way!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah way,” he said. “Want to go for a ride?”

Arthur realized right then that this was it for his chances with her. He’d made an effort, and it had all gone fairly well (or at least better than he had expected), and now it looked as if she was about to leave with some stranger making the absurd claim that he owned a spaceship.

Not to mention he had that fake parrot on his shoulder that was oddly disconcerting. That parrot, for a reason he couldn’t quite explain, was what bothered Arthur most of all about him.

And Tricia was about to leave with him.

Then Arthur felt a sudden surge of confidence. He had made it this far with Tricia McMillan despite knowing he had virtually zero chance with her, and she had actually seemed to like him against all odds. He wasn’t about to let this chance slip away. He wasn’t going to lose her to a pirate with a weird parrot.

“Leave off,” Arthur warned him. “She’s with me.”

“No, Arthur, it’s fine,” Tricia assured him. She turned back to the other man. “Do you really have a spaceship?” she asked him in a mixture of disbelief and amazement.

“You bet I do,” he replied.

There was definitely something disturbing about that parrot, but Arthur couldn’t place what it was. If he didn’t know any different, he perhaps would have thought this man actually had a second head disguised as a parrot. Although this thought would have been correct, it seemed so absurd to Arthur that it did not even cross his mind.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” he added. “I’m from another planet.”

“No way!” she said again. “What planet?”

“Why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you?”

She did.

Arthur stood awkwardly where Tricia had left him. There was not much point trying to talk to someone else, he thought, not after he totally failed to get anywhere with a girl he’d just started to think he might actually have a chance with.

Somewhere close by, a spaceship took off. The ship was designed to be quiet, and the sound of its engines could barely be heard over the rush of air it created as it took flight.

Arthur heard this, mistook it for the wind, and thought nothing of it.


	4. Chapter 3

Only one person at that party recognized the sound of the departing spaceship for what it was. That person was Ford Prefect.

He had been busy chatting up some girl at the time and was having much better luck with her than Arthur had had with Tricia. That didn’t last long, however, because the moment he heard the unmistakable sound of the ship’s engines, he told her he had to go, made up some excuse he didn’t care if she believed or not, then ran out of the flat, down the stairs, and outside.

This was it. He was finally going to leave. His exile on Earth was over.

He reached into his satchel and looked to the sky. The ship was already out of sight. The night sky, or at least what could be seen of it through the light pollution, was disappointingly typical. Some stars, a full moon. For a brief moment he thought he spotted the ship, but he quickly realized it was only the lights of a passing aeroplane.

No ship in sight.

His home was in sight.

From here, it appeared as nothing more than a small faint glow in the sky. The small faint glow of the star his home planet orbited hundreds of light-years away.

It seemed terribly small from Earth. Nothing more than a tiny, insignificant speck.

Ford knew now wasn’t the time to be homesick, though. He didn’t even care as much about going home anyway as he cared about just getting off this backwards, primitive, isolated planet and going anywhere, _anywhere_ less mundane.

Now was the time to get back on the road, so to speak.

He took from his bag his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, a handheld device which could detect electronic signals from passing ships from distances far greater than could be seen by the naked eye. All he had to do now was determine its location and hope whoever owned it wouldn’t mind picking up a hitchhiker.

Simple.

There was a blip on the screen. The ship was still nearby.

He took another device from his bag: the Thumb, a sort of black rod with a couple buttons and switches on it. A flick of a switch, and he’d be on the ship.

There was another blip on the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic’s screen.

Ford held up the Thumb in the direction indicated.

The Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic went blank. The ship was out of range.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try. He had nothing to lose. He pressed the switch to transmit the signal requesting permission to board, with the desperate hope that he wasn’t too late.

A few passers-by witnessed him suddenly vanish, questioned their sanity for a moment, and continued on as if they had seen nothing out of the ordinary.


	5. Chapter 4

Arthur Dent was feeling rather lost at the party at the Islington flat. Not only had Tricia left with a different gatecrasher, Ford was now nowhere to be found.

He didn’t particularly feel like mingling with the guests, and he was certain trying to talk to another girl would be a lost cause, so he resolved to find Ford and suggest leaving. Or, if Ford didn’t want to leave yet, Arthur would just let him know he was heading home and tell him goodbye. Either way, he was going to leave the party and, if possible, would prefer not to leave his friend wondering where on Earth he’d gone.

Problem was, he couldn’t find Ford.

At first he wandered aimlessly, keeping an eye out for him. Then he asked around and found out that Ford had been seen leaving not too long ago.

That wasn’t what Arthur had expected. Then again, Ford often did things Arthur did not expect.

Arthur left the flat and went outside. He was half-expecting to see Ford standing there on the pavement a few paces away from the door and staring up into the sky in that way he had a habit of doing.

Ford wasn’t there.

Arthur went back inside, figuring that maybe Ford had gone back in.


	6. Chapter 5

A common misconception among would-be hitchhikers inexperienced with interstellar travel is that hitchhiking around the galaxy is all Algolian sunshine and rainbows. The truth is that interstellar travel is actually a real hassle.

There are several ways to go about travelling from one star system to another. The simplest way, of course, would be to travel to your destination in the same way you would travel to another planet within the same system. The main problem with this method of interstellar travel is that it can take anywhere from a few years to several lifetimes to reach your destination. Most people consider this rather inconvenient, which is why nobody does this.

The most popular method of interstellar travel is jumping through hyperspace, which is usually described as feeling unpleasantly like being drunk. Now, if being drunk doesn’t sound so bad, consider what it must be like from the point of view of a glass of water.

Fortunately, hyperspace travel is extremely safe: 9 out of 10 hyperspace jumps are successful with all passengers coming out present and intact at the other end. Not including the risk of death or accidental jumps between alternate timelines or parallel universes, the worst that could happen is that you might pass out for a few seconds and wake up more or less perfectly okay.


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> torch = flashlight, for all you americans reading this

Being transported onto the ship was more disorienting than Ford Prefect remembered. Not nearly as bad as it would be for anyone who’d never been through a matter transference beam, of course, but being stranded on Earth for so many years had left him a bit unaccustomed to this sort of thing.

No matter. It wouldn’t take long for him to get used to the sensations of space travel again. Soon enough, he’d finally be back to his old life again, travelling all over the galaxy once more.

He couldn’t wait.

First things first, though. He had to get his bearings. He sat up and looked about with the aid of a torch he conveniently had on him.

He appeared to be in the luggage compartment of a passenger craft. Not the most interesting of ships to board, but it at least meant he had a very low chance of being shot at, ejected into space, or anything else of the sort. That was good.

But it felt like the ship was descending. That didn’t seem right.

His first thought was that it must be preparing to land, but he quickly reasoned that this was not the case. Just moments ago, it had flown out of range of the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. Wherever it was going, one thing was clear: it was heading away from Earth.

Besides, the nearest spaceport was at Alpha Centauri, four light-years away. There was really nowhere a passenger ship would have any reason to land within a few light-years of here.

With the possibility of landing ruled out, he figured maybe it was just a problem with the ship’s artificial gravity that made it feel like it was falling. Probably nothing to worry about.

Ford didn’t have a clue where this ship was headed. He didn’t think it was too big a deal, any spaceport would do for now, but he decided he may as well find out anyway. The tags on the luggage made it pretty easy to tell: they were marked with the code LHR.

He didn’t know which spaceport this code designated, but he knew where to look.

He took yet another device from his satchel. This one looked like some sort of largish calculator but far more complicated. Over it was a cover on which the words ‘DON’T PANIC’ were inscribed in large friendly letters.

This device was not actually a calculator or anything of the sort. It was a copy of _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ , which is undoubtedly the most useful, most successful, most popular, and also most controversial compendium of comprehensive yet questionably-accurate knowledge in the entire galaxy.

Ford removed the cover, activated the Guide, and looked up the LHR spaceport.

Luyten Halress.

He was admittedly not familiar with the planet of Halress, but he knew where Luyten’s Star was. It was just over twelve light-years from the Earth. Nothing more than a short hyperspace jump away.

He could hardly believe it. He’d finally made it off of Earth. Those fifteen long years he’d spend trapped on that planet would soon be nothing but a distant memory.

Finally, he was free.

An in-flight announcement sounded. From inside the cargo hold it was barely audible, and it was impossible for Ford to tell what was being said.

Probably about to enter hyperspace, he thought. Hardly enjoyable, but travelling through hyperspace was unavoidable. He put away the Guide, then wrapped his arms round himself, staying sat where he was, and braced himself for the jump.

Nothing happened.

Something wasn’t right. The ship still seemed to be descending.

Ford waited. Still no hyperspace jump.

He let himself relax a little, realizing that the ship might not be about to jump into hyperspace after all. Maybe it really was landing. Perhaps they’re making an emergency landing, he considered.

It would be just his luck if they were forced to land on Earth and couldn’t repair the hyperspace drive or whatever else had malfunctioned. They certainly wouldn’t find any replacement parts there.

There was nothing to do now but wait for landing. Or try and find out what exactly was going on.

Ford chose the latter. He got up, shining his torch along the walls of the cargo hold. He was looking for a door to the main body of the ship, or at least a light switch so he could see his surroundings better.

He spotted a door with a large red handle and the warning ‘DANGER: KEEP CLOSED AT ALL TIMES DURING FLIGHT’. It probably led to the airlock, he thought, or possibly directly out of the ship if the cargo hold was completely sealed off from the rest of it. Best not to open that one now.

He had only just looked away from the exit door when the ship landed with an abrupt thud that nearly knocked him off his feet. Oddly enough, it was still moving along the ground and only gradually coming to a stop.

Ford opened the door once the ship had slowed down somewhat. He could have waited until it came to a complete stop and disembarked as the luggage was being unloaded, of course, but that would be an awful lot less exciting than making a quick escape. And he needed the excitement.

So he scanned his surroundings quickly in order to judge how best to make a reasonably safe escape. The first and most obvious thing he noticed was that it had landed at an airport.

Not the most inconspicuous place to land a spaceship, but a reasonable choice for safety when it came to landing something as large as a passenger ship. It attracted rather a lot of attention, though. Ground crew members wearing high-vis vests assembled near the runway with lights and flags, frantically trying to signal something.

They looked bewildered when they noticed him hovering in the open doorway of the cargo hold. They were even more bewildered when they saw him take a few steps back and make a running jump out of what turned out not to be a spaceship after all but rather a Boeing 747 which had inadvertently allowed him on board when his attempt to hitch a ride on a passing ship caused a momentary interference with the plane’s navigation systems.

Ford made a not-so-graceful but not entirely botched landing on the tarmac, got back up, cursed his luck at what little distance it had taken him, and took off running before anyone could alert security


	8. Chapter 7

Arthur Dent was on a train.

He was on a train because, given the limits of Earth technology, it was the most practical way for him to return home from London.

And he was on his way home from London because it was getting late and he didn’t want to stick around at that fancy-dress party in Islington any longer.

Ford Prefect was not on the train with him. This was because Arthur had given up looking for him after a short while longer and left the party on his own.

The train was still at the station.

Arthur’s mind wandered to Tricia McMillan and how spectacularly badly that had all ended. He was still shocked that she had left with some idiot who’d barged in and said he was from another planet. Especially since she was clearly intelligent enough to have half a brain and should have seen right through something like that.

Not that Arthur had had a chance with Tricia anyway.

He looked out the window impatiently. He just wanted to get home.

Someone sat down in the empty seat next to him.

“Ford?” Arthur said in surprise. “Where in the world have you been?”

“Heathrow Airport,” Ford answered nonchalantly. “Didn’t exactly mean to go there, but oh well.” He shrugged. “Those things happen. How did things go with the girl?”

Arthur did not understand. Going to a party and accidentally ending up in an airport was not the sort of thing which had ever or would likely ever happen to him.

“Dare I ask what you were doing at the airport?”

“Getting off an aeroplane,” he said.

Now Arthur was very confused. This didn’t make any sense to him.

“What?”

“I left the party, took a wrong turn, and accidentally found myself on a Boeing 747,” he explained matter-of-factly. “Slight navigation error.”

“How do you accidentally end up on an aeroplane?” asked Arthur, who was growing more confused by the second.

Ford smiled in that peculiar way he sometimes did. It was the kind of smile that looked innocent enough yet was just slightly unsettling for some inexplicable reason. Arthur figured it best to not question him further.

“I did talk to her, by the way,” Arthur added. “Tricia McMillan, her name was. She left with someone offering her a ride in his spaceship. She actually left with him! Can you believe it?”

Ford’s reply, which incorrectly seemed to Arthur to be a well-crafted attempt to rub his failure in his face, was simply:

“Can’t say I blame her, honestly.”


End file.
